Friday, 28 August 2009

Craftacular, markets and general creativeness

It's been a busy week at work for me so not had time to update the blog until now.

So, last weekend I dragged myself from my bed (went out Friday night, intended only to stay out a few hours...ended up not back til 2am, oops) and hopped on the tube to Bethnal Green to pay the Bust Craftacular a visit. Wasn't really sure what to expect, but despite the venue reminding me very much of school assemblies, there were lots of people surrounding most of the 50 stalls.

There was a mixture of the cute, the retro, the unusual and in some cases distinctly bizarre (!) but some great eye candy and worth the trip. Favourites included the cool wooden animal brooches on the OFFCUT design stall, the gorgeous birdie artwork on offer from Little Doodles and the very cool Tatty Devine stand where they were attempting to make a record breaking charm bracelet. My sole purchase of the day was this adorable little horse brooch on the Fine City Friends stall.

Since my housemate was away for the weekend, on the Sunday morning I headed to Spitalfields market to see what was on offer there. Lots of clothes - some handmade, some bought in, plus plenty of jewellery and food from pretty much every continent you can think of. Some equally cool market stalls can be found further up towards Brick Lane at the Sunday Upmarket and the Backyard Market. So if you are at a loss for something to do on a Sunday I recommend a trip there.

So what have I got up my crafty sleeves in the coming weeks? Well, I have a silver clay workshop booked for a few weeks time that I'm really looking forward to, some belated birthday present jewellery to finish and I'm also brainstorming some ideas for a piece to enter in the Beads and Beyond magazine jewellery designer of the year competition. I'll let you know how that turns out